Morning journal and courier., 1887-04-30
OBSOLETE TRADES.
Human Occupations That Have
 Changed With the WhirIigIg o1


 Human Occupations That Have Changed With the whirIigig of Time.
 From the Pittsburg Dispatch.l
 Time changes; men and their motives, GUS toms and vacations change; even the earth and the sun, the scientists tell us, undergo continual notifications internally and exter- nally. Only God and his laws are unchange- able and change is one of his laws.
 Let any man think of the trades that were carried on when he was 8 boy and compare them with those of to day. He will be sur prised to see how many occupations have be- come completely transformed or entirely ob- solete even in his lifetime, and how many new trades have come into being. There was 8 time, and not very long ago either, when such articles as combs, brushes, hats, carpets, tin plates, pins, needles and hun dreds of other things that are now turned out with almost inconceivable rapidity by the aid of steam-driven machinery, were all made by hand in a most laborious manner In those days the word watchmaker meant 8 maker and not @ repairer of watches; the gunsmith was maker of guns and so on.
 In a "Book of Trades" published early in this century, an illustration represents the "calico printer" at work with block and mallet, stamping the figures upon the cloth in that manner. Now his occupation is like
  vince of India. whence this cloth was brought to English markets in 1881. It's manufac- ture was begun in England in 1773.
 The art of making pins of brass was not known in England until the middle of the sixteenth century; prior to that time pins were made of bone, ivory or some similar material. Formerly 8 pin passed through the hands of twenty-five or more workmen before it was ready for sale; now machine takes the wire and makes them by hundreds of thousands, doing everything, even to sticking the pins on paper.
 "Not worth tinker's curse' is common expression, signifying utter worthlessness. The travelling tinker was once as numerous as the peripatetic book agent now is. He was stjack of all trades" and good at most of them. If he was industrious and did not squander his earnings in drink his trade was by no means to be despised. Many far mer's household watched for his coming and gladly welcomed him. He could repair a clock, mend tin and earthen dishes and fix almost anything that was out of order. The saying quoted probably means that an article so poor that tinker would condemn it is past all hope of usefulness.
 Another extinct occupation, once almost as common as that of the blacksmith, is that of the brazier. Brassworkers we have to be sure, but they no longer work with the sim pie tools used by the old-time brazier, who with his hammer and anvil fashioned ket- ties, pots, pans, candlesticks and other household utensils.
 Brass is one of the most useful metal com pounds, and has Eeen employed in the me- chanic arts almost from the dawn of history It is an alloy of copper and zinc combined in the proportion of seventy or eighty per cent of the former and twenty or thirty of the latter. It was first obtained by the ancients from cadmia or calomine, an ore containing copper and sometimes found in the same mines with zinc. These two ores being melt ed together produced brass or, if certain amount of tin was present, bronze. Most of the arms and instruments found in Hercula- Homer and other ancient writers refer to it so frequently that, beyond question, it must have been extensively used.
 Brass is both ductile and malleable; it is also durable, and when polished of a rich color; it is therefore an indispensable part of thousands of useful and ornamental articles. Copper is very widely distributed in the rocks of the earth, but zinc is more rare. Some curious methods of obtaining copper were formerly practiced, as this extract from an old English book will show:
 "There are two springs at Sterngrundt, in upper Hungary, so richly impregnated with copper and sulphuric acid that iron thrown into these is dissolved by the acid, and the copper falls to the bottom in it's metallic form Near these springs pits are dug and filled with water Old iron is then thrown into them, which in about fortnight or three weeks is taken out and the copper scraped off. By this process one hundred l pounds of iron will produce from eighty to l ninety pounds of copper. The same method | is adopted at some springs in the county of | Wicklow in Ireland, and here twenty pounds 1 ,f iron will yield sixteen of copper, which | ;etches high price,"